Suriname Break

Aug 14, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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It was supposed to be a quick getaway to Suriname with the wife and children and to be back in Guyana before the 17th when the CSEC results – which were of some interest to my daughter – were supposedly going to be announced. It didn’t quite work out that way, but then Robert Burns had long warned all and sundry about the best laid plans of men and mice.
We decided to use the ferry so that we could get a feel for our CARICOM continental neighbour literally from the ground up. The arrangements at Moleson Creek were not half as cumbersome as we had been warned, save for the requirement that passengers in vehicles had to be processed separately from drivers, by immigration.
It was quite a sight to behold passengers from the arriving ferry sprinting at full throttle towards the immigration post. For a fleeting second I thought they might be rushing to touch the soil of the motherland, but quickly realised that they simply hadn’t lost their Guyanese trait for trying to be first in line. For anything.
The roll-on/roll-off went very smoothly and the Guyanese crew of the MV Canawaima assured me that this was quite routine. If we ever get our stellings on the Essequibo River right, this should make quite a difference for the river crossings there when we receive the Chinese ferries of that type later this year.
The plan was to head for Paramaribo – supposedly three hours away – then return to spend one night in Nickerie before re-crossing. Aside from some initial potholes, the East-West Highway was in remarkably good shape – compared with ours, of course. Repairs were ongoing on several stretches, with none of that sloppy filling of potholes business: this was full-blown stripping and resurfacing. The concrete bridges across their rivers were impressive. The 150 miles to Paramaribo is, however, disconcertingly uninhabited, save for a few tired and dusty villages.
Paramaribo’s historic downtown and riverfront, where we would be staying, is so much better preserved than ours that there is really no comparison. The Krasnapolsky, with a pool – a key demand of the kids – was all booked, giving us an early indication of the large number of tourists we would encounter. We ended up at the very wonderful Phoenicia Suites, that could teach our local operators a thing or two – and then some – about the importance of front-desk hospitality.
The historic sites are fully utilised to cater for the tourist trade: for instance there is a restaurant in one of the rooms of Fort Zeelandia and another (Italian) one in another historic building. I found it quite disturbing that all the maps displayed (for instance the ones in the Numismatics Museum) the New River Triangle as part of Suriname. When questioned, the Surinamese expressed surprise that I would question their map. We’re going to have some trouble convincing them otherwise.
Even as one approaches Paramaribo, one is struck by the number of new Chinese supermarkets and other retailing enterprises recently established. We would find the same in Nickerie. One has heard a great deal about China investing or about to invest some US$5 billion in Suriname – but on this family trip, all one could see were cheap Chinese goods sold by new Chinese immigrants. Individuals, from taxi drivers to businessmen, complained about the ease with which these Chinese are allowed to receive naturalisation papers and just as disturbingly, to clear the containers of merchandise they import.
Very few Surinamese I spoke to, see these immigrants remaining in the country permanently but fear that before they depart for greener North American pastures, they would have destroyed the native Surinamese middle class (interestingly one that contained some descendants of indentured Chinese). The fear is that bereft of that middle strata, the society would revert to one resembling the very polarised, old colonial one: a tiny upper class, rich group (those that benefitted from facilitating the Chinese) lording it over a large and impoverished mass of Surinamese.
The owner of the hotel insisted that I take the kids to the Multiplex in their mall. The taxi driver swore that the latter was the best “in the Caribbean” but when I reached there it was obvious that perchance he might have visited Guyana, but certainly not Barbados or Trinidad. The movies were all in English (the kids opted for “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”) with no subtitles, but the small and enthusiastic crowd lapped it up. On enquiry they revealed that they all had to study English in school.
Nickerie was a disappointment. I had last visited a decade ago and expected greater development. The rice fields on its outskirts had been joined by a banana plantation (with the plastic bags enveloping and protecting the bunches) but the town still looked like a lonely, colonial outpost. Only now, the Chinese with their “99 cent store” merchandise were setting the tone.

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